Farewell UMID, we hardly knew ye

UMID might never have become a household name, but the company produced some of the more interesting mini-clamshell computers over the past few years, including the mBook line of devices. These little handheld devices looked like laptops, but with 5 inch displays and tiny keyboards, they were really probably better designed for handheld or tabletop use than, well… using while on your lap.

Unfortuantely, it looks like UMID has gone out of business, which means that the company’s little computers are either collector’s items or obsolete, depending on how you look at it.

According to Pocketables, retailer Dynamism told a customer that UMID has gone out of business. The company’s Korean website is still and up and running, but it’s possible that if UMID is continuing to offer products they may soon be available only in Korea.

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The problem with UMID was the crappy GPU. It’s a nice hardware GPU with bad driver support. It kept a lot of people who wanted this ultra mobile PC from buying one. Intel is replacing this technology with a new crappy GPU with the same problems, and that’s going to be a major reason why tablets based on this hardware revision are going to fail. Of course, idiots will blame the operating systems. In reality, the only way to hide the crappiness of drivers is to use an operating system that’s just as crappy, which is why Android is “perfect” for crap like this.

Tommy

Noooo! Hoping Viliv and Ocosmos keep going. I prefer these Windows clamshells and sliders over any tablet of the same size.

Anonymous

Not to mention E-King and Inventec-Onkyo (they discontinued the Kohjinsha brand name) seems to still occasionally meddle in the UMPC field. But a lot of UMPC companies have gone out of business or at the very least are limited to remote parts of the world.

Sad to see UMID go, they had a very good thumb typing keyboard and were the only ones besides Viliv that you could find in most parts of the world. But the UMPC market has been in decline for years and UMID didn’t really have anything to compete with the Viliv’s N5.

Biggest hurdle has always been pricing, with the price premium that UMPC’s usually call for. But hopefully, Intel’s new push to compete more in the portable market range should finally make it easier for these companies to produce UMPC solutions and not risk bankruptcy every time they come out with a new product.